OH HI

That's two years in a row killed dead at the last minute, two ruined Christmases, two month-long panic-attack/crying jag/drinking binges.

You realize I might have to find god by default?

This is the only movie I have ever seen in my life where once in awhile I wonder how the characters are doing. I wish every movie was this one. I wish Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo could get this kind of material every time, and that we could live together in a casually polygamist relationship slash filmmaking troupe.

I usually know what's up on my way into any movie; if I haven't seen the trailer, I've at least read the synopsis, know who's in it, wrote it, directed it, something. I don't like surprises, I don't like to be uninformed, I don't like to be blindsided. But at Sundance sometimes you get swept up by the buzz. People are constantly asking you what you've seen; you do the same in the hopes of finding The One, the festival's crowning achievement that time will doubtless prove irrelevant and overblown, but hey the air is thin in Utah; you lose your head.

That's how I ended up in utter shit like Teeth and Haute Tension, though sometimes it resulted in mild joys like Hustle and Flow. And this one time it brought the jackpot—it's how I found the jewel of 2006, Once. I had NO IDEA what it was, seriously. I only knew it was Irish and people were talking about it. Didn't know it was a musical, didn't know it had been shot handheld and mostly guerilla-style, didn't know it was an indelible love story, didn't know it would refuse the happy ending.

It took me awhile to settle into the shooting style, and truthfully it's one of those movies where you spend the first hour wondering if it's started yet, but then this happened (you can't YT the single scene anymore, but you know which one I mean):

Once went onto become a worldwide phenomenon, culminating in an Oscar win for Best Song. It was an honour for me to be caught in that buzz.

When it comes to the best films in life, all your technological innovations, whiz-bang camera placement or social relevance don't mean shit. People can respect something like There Will Be Blood, but they don't love it, and they don't watch it more than once. Rewatchability is huge for me, writing is also huge, but the biggest is acting. There's not a computer in the world that can render the kind of performances wrought by Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo in You Can Count on Me, or enough visual flair to punch you in the heart like the simply shot duet of "Falling Slowly" in Once. You can have your auteurs, your Issue Films and your revolutionary CGI—I'll stick with feeling, the only thing we've got when the credits roll.

This movie changed my life.

It’s been a year since Kate, a few weeks less for my sleepless winter, which began shortly after she died. The night I recorded this, ironically, I was being kept awake by a party next door, the alley between the buildings full of smokers and yelling kids and, inevitably, the police.

Once silence finally fell, I pushed the window up—it was unseasonably warm for March. Alone in the house sometime after 2am, I wrote and recorded this in two takes, one for each part, digital reverb cranked, in the dark. It never felt like it had a purpose other than to be representative of my momentary sadness, an indulgence not meant for other ears. Yet on this anniversary, I’ve decided to re-indulge, just for today.

There are not many shows' credits sequences I bother watching; only the first episode of a new season to see if pictures have been updated (hello, Mariska) or if anyone has been bumped from supporting to full-time player or things like that.

But this season of Friday Night Lights is the exception. Check this shit:

That's the closing shot of season 3, when the show's fate was undecided (it was ultimately re-upped for two seasons). Coach Taylor had been ousted as the head coach of the Panthers and offered a job running the East Dillon Lions. The school, in a shit part of town, hadn't even had a football team in years. This was Coach's first look at the field, decrepit and scrubby. It would've worked as a series finale, but it's worked even better as a season finale, with Coach struggling to rebuild from the bottom while his wife remains at the rival school and is fast becoming an unpopular principal.

But all of that is incidental, because using this shot as the closer for the credits is—besides a great representation of FNL's stellar camerawork—a perfect deployment of symbolism. It represents everything this show is about: struggle, working-class America, family, dreams and hope. I loved it then, and I feel lucky to be able see it every week this season.